I think my buddy that does it uses Grolsch bottles. Seems the smartest way to go.

The problem with that^^^ is maintaining sterility with those bottles. You have to, have to, have to make sure you sterilize 'round them gaskets. Maybe I don't give a damn you fuckers get sick, but I'll be damned if I could've prevented you all poisoning someone through negligence.

Anyway, that's why most brewers spend the few cents and cap 'em individually.

I'd never use a Grolsch bottle, if those are the bottles with the flip-top caps with the rubber or neoprene or whatever gaskets. For that matter that's why I won't drink a Grolsch.

Actually, I might use the bottle if I can seal it with my own cap but the other reason I wouldn't use those bottles is the beer is not common or popular around here.

It was common around here until someone complained that the kids were using the top as a roach clip, kinda device. Then the tops went from something kinda stone like to something plastic. Then, none of the kids bought 'em any more, 'cause the beer always sucked.

I don't remember. Maybe they were Grolsch like. Top was definitely porcelain, not plastic.

Article about Grolsch bottles and home brewing. Says the gaskets are like 100 for $6.

http://grolschbottles.com/grolsch-style-bottles-for-home-brewing/

Look, I'm not fucking with you here, ok? There are some things you can fuck around with on cost, then there are some things that could make a person sick.

Gaskets are fine, provided the brewer is diligent enough to ensure ain't no bad bacteria growing in there.

Bornyo? Sure, he'll be on top of that motherfucker.

Fwoofie? As much as I loathe the gentleman, yeah, he'd be on it as well.

You? Well, shit, sorry dude, but <and, again, this ain't personal> but you don't. . you just don't betray the requisite hygiene for it.

I'm sorry, but you could make a person sick on this shit.

There are some things you can Panzer. This ain't one of 'em.

meh...fuck 'em. At least around here. I can get free longneck bottles and the steel caps are about 2.5 cents and seal fine. I have the option of recycling the caps though that rarely happens.

I'm simply not screwing with gaskets and spring clips. Then again I don't buy coffee at Starbucks or go to juice bars either.

Exactly. They're as cheap everywhere.

I don't home brew beer, since I rarely drink at home. I was talking about a friend.

That style has been recommended to me, but I'm going to keg it as soon as I can. If I can get my ducks in a row I'll ferment in a kegerator, provided I can dial in the right temperatures depending upon the yeast's preferred climate, etc.

Then, just turn it down when fermentation is complete and drink it. Then again, if I make more than one batch I'll need two kegerators, one for fermenting and one for chilling and serving. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I've never kegged, but those who do suggest cornelius (corny) kegs. The kind the soda comes in. Disstributors cycle them out of inventory fairly often. Lots of good kegorator how- tos on the YouTube too. And those kind of kegs don't take up as much valuable real estate.

Do you know how to keg? I understand it's pretty involved. Never done it, tho.

I don't do the G bottles. Gasket issue for me, too. They're spendy, too.

On recycling, no twist tops. They will not seal. And Corona bottles don't seat exactly right. I've never had one fail, but I'm just not in love with the way the cap looks on them. I make tomato waterpipes out of them now.

If you use anything other than amber bottles, keep them out of the light.

My first kit was a Coopers Canadian something. 3 weeks later I was amazed as fuck that I'd made beer. And it was right tasty.

I'm looking forward to cooler weather so I can try the White House recipes. Those will be my first non- kit batch.

Main rule is clean, clean and clean again. If you're unsure, clean.

It's amazing that beer/ liquor has been made since the dawn of Man, give or take a couple years. We're so obsessed with sanitation today, but they somehow made drinks 750 years ago. I mean, handwashing is a pretty recent "discovery", like less than 150 years ago.

Of course, I'm sure a lot of folks got poisoned by skunky beer.

That said...clean clean clean.

Last night with the bf's before 3 weeks in nyc. We've hit a few places but just doing ketel1 on rocks as to not upset or be high maintenance. Good night. Van Halen is on. I used to hate them. Gotta catch my flight to JFK them turn in my Karina White set for Fox. Can't wait to dine with Charlie in person again.

Dude, I was introduced to the "Corny" kegs yesterday, and that is precisely what was recommended to me!

What's more, we brewed the White House Honey Porter. I think I'm gonna like this hobby.

It's fun. My problem is that I don't drink much, so I still have bottles from all my batches. They've aged nicely.

what Barry said except I drink much. I did a bunch of homebrewing with a friend of ours maybe ten years ago and it was fun at first and a good reason to drink if you needed one but then it became a chore.

going to the store and grabbing what you like on any given day is so much easier.

I wish EY was around to give a better answer, but two things:

First, like you said, it's been done since the dawn of time, so that by 750 years ago, to give the date you also used, they probably got most of the kinks out of the system. You know how, in the Old Testament, Moses(?) forbids pork, and, by the Roman era (or, the dawn of Christianity) they've figured out how to make it safe, so it's unbanned in the New Testament? I think it's more in line with that, than the handwashing.

Another thing to consider is that, like you said, handwashing is a recent discovery. People were getting all kinds of food/beverage borne ailments well into the 20th century because of improper sanitation. Salmonella, trichinosis, etc. Hell, there wasn't even regulation of "pure" food and drugs until Teddy Roosevelt was President. It's likely that there were lots of bad beer cases that were never properly diagnosed.

It's probably a combination of both, so, just like they figured out how to cure pork, generally, and a bad butcher or cook could spoil it locally, same with booze generally and specific brewers locally.

But all the knowledge in the world ain't gonna help when a butcher, or a brewer, don't give even the two shits to wash his hands before leaving the facilities.

750 yrs ago you poisoned yourself eating with the same hand you scooped shit outta your ass with. any alcohol you put in your system was essentially medicine.

All of that said, I'm drinking some Woodchuck Private Reserve cider, which I'm assured, meets basic sanitary requirements.

So WTF happens if the bottle's a tiny bit dirty when you make beer? Will it make you go blind? Puke? Or will it just smell/taste awful?

Any of the above can happen, except blindness. Beer just blurs vision...even bad beer!

Goes bad. Tastes shitty. You probably wouldn't drink enough to get sick.

A buddy and I were going to get rich growing mushrooms (the magical kind) out of season. Everyone likes mushrooms. Got one of the kits out of the back of High Times. Talk about a fucking science project. We just figured toss the spores into a sack of sterilized manure and would be tripping in no time. Petrie dishes, industrial cleaners, a sealed off room. It was a pain with no payoff at all.

I may or may not have a person I was previously acquainted with that got one of those shroom kit and made it a hobby for a while. He was getting QPs every couple weeks and was handing out 1/2 ozs to friends that stopped by his house like it was trick or treat candy. His wife made him stop. I told him that the next time she wants to go on a pricey vacation, or get something nice for the house, tell her that you'll grow enough to cover it, then lie about how much you are selling them for.

I haven't tried any, because the last 2 times I did some, the night ended fetal after violent vomiting. Next time I go to a casino I'm gonna pop and lil cap and stem.

For the love of Jesus, if you actually do, give someone here the name of the goddamn casino ahead of time so we can obtain the security/news footage of you being carried off by cops/emts in hazmat suits.

Nah, lil bit will just give you a bounce in your step, not trip face.

I'm familiar with the effects. I simply don't see you having the restraint to stop at a cap and a stem. Mostly, because I'm certain it'll be insufficient to give you a buzz, and, predictably, you'll go overboard.

In the old days, before hand washing, baby's weren't expected to make it past five years old. If you did make it, it was because you were made of sterner stuff and had developed a high resistance to what would kill most of us today. We gained a lot with modern methods, but it wasn't with out cost.

Yep, that is me. I am completely prone to excess, then doing and saying stupid things.

When the Bongos were by last, he told us there was some acid floating around. No way I could handle that shit.

Acid is easier on my tummy. I don't drink beer while on it thought. Just weed and water or iced tea.

When I used acid, maybe 20 yrs ago, I drank with it too. Probably should have saved the beer money because it had no effect whatsoever. I hated the clenched jaw we called rat-jaw the next morning, though, and just gave it up. Mushrooms, however, never seemed to have a hangover. I've seen many people puke them up, though. They aren't for everyone.

Mushrooms felt less "chemical". I'm not sure how else to put it. Like side effects of medicines...if that makes sense. Or the way a chemical burn feels. The LSD hangover felt that way...just wrong. I got dosed by a swimming pool's chloride feeder one time. The residual feeling afterward was that way. You could almost feel the poison coursing through you. I didn't much care for LSD because of that.

Mushrooms felt cleaner, I guess. I'm way too high strung to do either one now.

I did a tab of acid once in my life and it sucked. I did schrooms once and tripped my balls off. I was writing Japanese kanji characters in tadpole style.

I liked mushrooms. A lot.

I still do. I'm just glad I never come across them. I know exactly what you mean about the acid vs the 'shrooms. I probably tripped acid 4 or six times and it was enough. I quit not because of the trips but because of the day after.

I (knock on wood) never had a bad trip with either, but looking back on it, that's because of the company and environment I chose in which to eat them.

Acid is an amazing drug as long as you keep good company and engage in something fun.

I remember once I went out to Holland Michigan with a group of friends for a week. In the townhouse we rented, there was a croquet set in the shed. I set up a badass wicket course and proceeded to show my friends how to play the game. They scoffed. Mind you, we each dropped a hit of some powerful, powerful shit (believe it was called flypaper) about a half-hour prior. So anyway, just when we were thinking that the drug was bunk, one of our friends who was not on acid, but drinking heavily, made a bad shot and missed a wicket by a mile. In his pseudo-rage, he flung his mallet into a nearby tree. I swear to fucking God, I saw that thing fly in slow-motion. It was on, and, let me tell you, it was on hard. This guy proceeds to climb the tree to retrieve his lost sports paraphenilia. After getting up there and getting it down, apparently proud of his achievement, he decides to show bravado and does a pull-up on the lowest tree branch. Big mistake. Branch broke and he impaled his upper-chest-armpit on the top of a privacy fence. Bled like a stuck pig. shrugged it off and continued the game. He went in to chill out and nurse his injury and the rest of us (the five of us that were on acid) continued to play about six hours of nonstop croquet. After that, we fired up the N64 and started playing Cruisin' USA. we probably spent about an hour just sitting there and laughing at the theme to the game. Lauged so goddamn hard I had an asthma attack.

I guess my point is, that acid can make anything fun as long as your with like-minded folk.

croquet is actually pretty fun.i had a croquet set when i was a little kid(i think it was my familys first) and me and the neighborhood kids would play with it quite a bit.

It's more fun on acid.

The last time I did shrooms was maybe 25 years ago. My cunt ex was all pissed off at me for doling them. Of course she didn't say anything until it I'd eaten them. Then she really amped it up. Terrible trip because I was stuck in a two bedroom apartment with a cunt ragging on me pretty non stop.

I want some peyote.

I remember one time my buddy sold soup mushrooms ($1.50 for a bag) and made over $100 selling them to the neighborhood kids. Some of them actually claimed to have tripped off them.

My cousin from New Mexico sent me a parcel of peyote when I was in college. Me and 2 friends tripped at this one guy's house. First, they taste like rancid fuck. Not enough chocolate sauce in the universe to make it not disgusting. Second, it's a very self centered trip. You're aware that others are around you, but they're just furniture. You're very much aware of yourself. It forces your thoughts to come from a deep place. It's hard to explain without getting into hippie jibberish. I can understand why it was a spiritual thing to the drunken Indians.

As long as it doesn't wanna make me chew a guy's face off, I don't give a fuck. Give me a peyote button.

Any of y'all read Carlos Castenada back in the day? His books really made me want to try peyote but living in Dixie, I never ran across any. Magic mushrooms that grow in cow patties, however, were plentiful.

I agree that with acid or mushrooms, the setting, environment and company in which you start your trip very much affects it's outcome.

I find that a solid dose of shrooms turns me into a moth. If there is a light source (TV, campfire), then I am fixed on it.

I've only had mushrooms once. I told my friend to get some mellow shit because if something went bad, I'd kill him first. Anways, we put them on a leftover pizza that was in the kitchen, ate that and went to a strip club. It kicked in when we hit the parking lot and we wound up listening to a live version of Comfortably Numb at full volume that just happened to pop up on iPod shuffle as we were parking. We were rocking out and giving each other high-fives. I can't remember what all else it did to us other than make me feel even more awesome than usual. I know one of the dancers told us that we were rock stars, so it must've been cool.

I may have told this before, or some iteration of it... but about six of us ate 'shrooms at my college apartment and were sitting around drinking beer and decided to head "downtown" to the bars before they fully kicked in. Five young men pile into the car, but the 6th is missing. We send one in after him...5 minutes and nothing, so I go in. The two are in my bathroom looking at reflections off water dripping in slow motion from the vanity faucet. So at that point there are three. The 4th soon joined and about 5 minutes later all six of us were in the apartment bathroom laughing our asses off. 45 minutes later we walk out all 6 single file, hand on the shoulder in front of you and pile all 6 in the car and head downtown. Mushrooms wreak havoc on an agenda.

Good times.

My friends and I had done window pane and mushrooms a few times but I was not big into trips. I liked it but it took too much out of me and lasted too long. One night during senior year of high school, my buddy and I went to the midnight movies and ran into a friend of ours we hadn't seen for a while. He had been out to Colorado to see a string of Grateful Dead shows and had come back with a Visene bottle full of killer acid.
We stuck our dumb ass tongues out and he dosed each of us with three or four full drops. The movie was Zappa's 200 Motels and by the time the Centerville piece came on I knew I was in way over my head. I remember walking through the parking garage and some of driving home, but it really is a miracle we got home.
I also remember at one point during the night looking over at the stereo and seeing the album slow to a dead stop and start to melt into the receiver, which then poured the green from the radio dial all over the night stand. I looked over at my buddy and he had aged about 70 years and looked like an old man.
I feel the same way about acid vs shrooms. Mushrooms are much lighter and less edgy and make you want to be outside. Mellow Mushrooms.

I always felt fully in control on Acid, in a physical sense. No problems driving, walking, etc. Just couldn't go to work or deal with family on the shit. Everything was just too fucking funny and entertaining. I could only imagine rolling around on the ground, laughing my ass off just at my bosses facial expressions.